Taking

Taking advantage of the hot market for natural gas-firedgeneration TXU Electric put six gas-fired generating plants with acombined capacity of 3,116 MW on the market last week.

Despite a round of midday profit taking, the natural gas futuresmarket was able to eke out a modest advance amid continued see-sawtrading activity yesterday. The September contract led all othermonths, posting a 1.9-cent gain en route to a $2.727 close.Estimated volume was robust with 86,261 contracts changing hands.

Sonat declared a force majeure Friday for its 26-inch Main PassLine after taking the Olga (LA) Compressor Station off-line due toproblems with the liquids re-injection system. Olga capacity wasreduced to 430,000 dth/d, affecting 35 receipt points. The pipelineestimated it would take 10 days to restore full service at thestation.

Tennessee said Monday rehab work on the Sun Lateral in westernLouisiana will be completed ahead of schedule and it will resumetaking nominations at all Sun meters for Wednesday’s gas day. Thepipeline had earlier projected that the project would extend untilJuly 9 (see Daily GPI, June 22).

NiSource is taking its $68/share offer ($5.6 billion) directlyto Columbia Energy Group shareholders today and said it has filedlitigation against Columbia and its directors in the DelawareChancery Court in an attempt to gain an opportunity to nominate adirector to fill a vacant seat on Columbia’s board. The seat wasvacated in May when one of Columbia’s directors retired, butColumbia failed to call for a shareholder vote on a replacement atits annual meeting last month, NiSource said.

Light profit-taking that began in Monday’s Access tradingsession, continued yesterday at the New York Mercantile Exchange.Locals were seen as aggressive sellers, unloading positions aheadof today’s storage report. The July contract finished at $2.393,down 4.9 cents for the day.

After negotiations with a special committee of Aquila Gas Pipeline (AQP) directors on an acquisition offer failed last week, UtiliCorp United Inc. launched an $8.00 per share cash tender offer directly to shareholders on Friday for all outstanding shares of the midstream operation. Kansas City, MO-based UtiliCorp already owns about 82% of AQP; the public owns about 18%, or 5.4 million shares.

With two of its shippers taking released capacity instead of newspace, Northern Border has filed a request with FERC to downsizeits proposed Indiana extension project, Project 2000, and reducethe expected costs by $64 million. The reduction would mean asmaller rate increase, under rolled-in rate design, than would haveoccurred in the original project plan – a 2.06% rise versus 2.39%.

With two of its shippers taking released capacity instead of newspace, Northern Border has filed a request with FERC to downsizeits proposed Indiana extension project, Project 2000, and reducethe expected costs by $64 million. The reduction would mean asmaller rate increase, under rolled-in rate design, than would haveoccurred in the original project plan-a 2.06% rise versus 2.39%.